fade to grey

Oh, it's not hard to know what you're thinking
When you look down on me now
Your trance of love is seeking
To turn this world around

Look away. Look away. Just look away, goddamn it! Stop staring at me! Stop staring at me, Dee. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to let you kiss me this time. I'm not going to let this sick joke progress any further. I'm not--

I'm not going to be able to do anything, am I?

Not this time. There's no way that I can stop you from kissing me tonight. Maybe I can't even stop you from doing more. From having me like you want to. Not tonight. I can't let you go tonight.

How can you do it? How can you sit there, so casual, so relaxed, as if nothing happened? How can you talk and joke and laugh and stroke my face with those soft, long fingers of yours when you almost died today? I can't. Can't understand, can't do anything other than lie here in utter shock until one would think that I had been the one who almost died.

I wonder if you know what I see when I look at you. I wonder if you've ever taken a look at the world from my point of view; and I don't mean from my position now, lying on my back and looking up at you. At you. Not at God, or the ceiling, or the sky, or clouds or heaven or anything pure and perfect and wonderful but at you. At Dee Latnyer, horribly human, horribly fallible, horribly obnoxious...horribly transparent.

You are transparent. I can read your face so well. I see your want, your need. Your love. Your lust.

You are so trusting in your love that it makes me sick sometimes. I can't believe just how entrenched, entranced you are with this notion that there is such a thing as love. You've had just as much--if not more--hardship as I have. So how can you still believe in love?

Still, I can't help but feed off of your blind faith that love is enough. Even if it's never enough. I can't help but feed off of you and fill that empty space, that missing part of me that should have made me human. I don't think I can be human if I can't love.

But in my state of blind confusion
No god can pull me out
I see your love is willing
To turn me inside out

But if I can't love, than why did the thought of losing you hurt so much? I was so afraid, so full of panic at the thought of you dying that it was almost a tangible thing. It hurts me even now, makes my chest constrict and my heart speed up and I feel a sob threatening at the thought of you not being there tomorrow or the next day, or the day after that even though I see you right now, right over, pale eyes staring down lovingly at me. You, for whom there is only black or white, right or wrong, good or bad, love...or hate.

Oh don't think I don't see it, Dee. You love me, so everything that might take my love away you hate. You hate JJ because he clings to you, acts like your lover and the thought that you might be taken could drive me further away from you than I am now. You hate Lt. Rose because he desires me. You hate Carol and Bikky because they want to keep us apart. It's always love or hate with you, no in between. Everything must be an absolute.

But there is only one absolute, Dee, and that's death. I've always believed that, always knew that everything died so it was better to just not get involved because tomorrow you could die, or they could die, and everything would hurt all over again. That was how I've lived, that's how I'm going to live, and that's how I'm going to survive life. Never open up, never let anyone in, and you'll never feel pain if they're gone. I've lived that way so long, that I don't think anything could pull me out from this...crevice of never caring that I've wedged myself into.

So why is it that I can feel you?

And then I see you there
The lonely tears I cry
I wish they'd release me

I keep telling myself to be strong. To not give in to your eyes, your mouth, your shining face. And when you're not here, it works. I can get rid of you, shove you away from me, forget you. I can pretend that my shell, my protection is still there.

But you come back. You appear in my dreams. You exist everywhere and every time I think I've gotten rid of you, I see you again.

I would wish that you would die, if it didn't hurt so much.

Oh God. My chest hurts. And I'm crying. I'm fucking crying. Because I almost wished you were dead.

The room is too close, too hot. You are too close. I'm trapped. By you. By the room. By myself.

I need some air.

It's in despair that I find faith
Summons the night to bow down to day
If ignorance is bliss
Won't you save me from myself

Y'know, it's times like these that I wish I lived somewhere other than New York. Anywhere has to be better than this crowded hell hole where the farthest I can go to escape from you is my fire escape. Not far enough, but still too far away.

Still, I suppose the city suits me. I can find myself reflected in this broken world, in this teeming anthill of faceless, empty, machines.

Yes, the city is a very apt metaphor--analogy even?--for myself. By day we hide our true nature behind a happy mask, a false identity of tranquil peace and prosperity. By day the city and I can pretend that we have beaten back the horrors of the night, the dark, human, vicious world that howls to claim us.

But then the night comes and all the dark secrets come out and everything that I've ever ignored, ever hidden horror of myself is suddenly revealed in the black light of night.

My life is a vicious cycle of too perfect day and demonic night. They are my absolutes, the two poles that rule me. And I can never be caught in the grey area between. I must be in my day or night.

Or at least, that was how I used to live, before Dee, before realizing that there is grey space between, before the kindling of some dark part that is forcing its way into the light.

And then I see you there
With you arms open wide and you try to embrace me
These lonely tears I cry
They keep me in chains and I wish they'd release me

"Ryo?"

I can never have a moments peace when you're around, eh Dee?

"Ryo, are you all right?"

You turn me, make me face you, lift up my chin until my tears gleam in the streetlights. You are so serious, Dee. I must have frightened you with my sudden flight, with my confusing tears.

Well good. You deserve to have a little confusion in your life of absolutes.

"Ryo, talk to me. What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"It's nothing Dee."

Cold is the night but
Colder still is the heart made of stone turned from clay
And if you follow me
You'll see all the black, all the white, fade to grey

"You're trembling."

"It's cold."

Why won't you go away?

"Come back inside, Ryo, where it's warm."

Come inside where it's warm? No, Dee. It's colder inside me than it is out in the night. But how would you know that?

I smile through the tears and that must confuse you even more.

"Ryo, please. Stop this. Why do you keep running away from me? Why do you keep pretending that there isn't...something between us?"

"Why? Because I don't want there to be. Well, I do but--Never mind. Dee...Tell me, how do you feel when JJ latches onto you?"

"What does JJ have to do with us?" Your brow furrows in frustration. Am I getting through to you, Dee? Are you beginning to understand me yet?

You sigh, and sit on the rail, staring at me with those pale eyes, so serious again. "I don't like it, Ryo. You know that. I think it's annoying and rude and a little childish too."

"You do?" A small laugh now. "That's interesting, because that's how I see your...advances, sometimes. Dee, why won't you leave me alone? I realize that you're aggressive, Dee. I realize that it's not easy for you to...back away sometimes. But did it ever occur to you that I don't want to be beaten into submission? Did it occur to you that maybe you push too hard, try too hard. I wasn't attracted to men before you, Dee. This...this is new. This isn't something that I'm comfortable with. And having you pursue me isn't helping me get comfortable with it all. Just because you love me doesn't mean that it's a given that I'm going to love your--or that your continued affections will make me love you."

You look down. Could it be that you are sorry? Well, that would be quite the occasion, now wouldn't it.

Crying makes me bitter. And my nose is dripping. Is there any graceful way to wipe snot from your nose?

"I'm sorry. I just--I'm sorry." You wipe away my tears, with fingers that are so gentle.

"It's okay." I don't want to look at you and it's not just because my eyes are red and puffy. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does. Ryo, I don't want you to be angry with me. I don't want you to hate me. I don't think I could stand to have you hate me."

"Dee, I don't think I could hate you." Dignity be damned. I need to look at you, to make sure that you aren't really dead. And so I look, and whatever calm rationality is left flees as I suddenly realize that you're alive. Alive! And out here on my fire escape and I don't think I could ever go through that again, could ever feel the despair I felt when I thought you had died.

"I love you, Dee." My arms around you and your shirt is rough against my cheek, growing wet from my tears, but I don't think I moved. "I love you so much and you almost died today and I do, I really do want to be with you, but I just--I'm so confused. I'm so confused and it all seems wrong and right at the same time. How can it be wrong and right? Please, don't leave me Dee. Don't leave. Don't leave."

Your arms come up, slowly at first, gentle and confused, and then tighter and harder--bone crushing, air crushing hard but I don't care--and you're crying too but I don't know why.

"I'm sorry, Ryo. I'm so sorry. I--I didn't know."

I don't care if you didn't know, Dee. I don't care about anything. I just want you to hold me now and don't ever let me go.

Fade to grey, yeah
Fade to grey, yeah

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